


please don't say you love me

by grapehyasynth



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Non SHIELD AU, Unrequited Love, but also everyone's in love, but also like everyone's unsure about their feelings, whatever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 11:43:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7890574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grapehyasynth/pseuds/grapehyasynth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fitzsimmons AU inspired by Gabrielle Aplin's "Please Don't Say You Love Me" music video, featuring our very own Iain de Cutestecker.  Written for anon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	please don't say you love me

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a drabble reply but a six-hour drive gives you time to think of more than that so have this thing. I am v tired and would also like to state for the record I very much love Iain's beanie in this music video

“I think that’s upside down.”

Jemma bats Fitz’s hand away as he reaches over to try to flip her map. “It most certainly is not! Honestly, thinking I can’t read a map because we got lost _one time_. And if you’ll recall we ended up at a lovely beach, so all in all, you should be grateful for my momentary confusion.”

He goes back to grinning at the road ahead, and Jemma leans into the far corner of her seat, but she’s only pretending to study the route to Glasgow. Really, she’s studying Fitz.

He’s got his worn orange beanie on, the one she calls his turtle hat. The way he snugs it over his ears, it seems like he’s hiding, like if he could he’d just keep pulling it down until it covered him like a turtle’s shell. He hates when she calls it that and insists he just wants to keep his head warm. She thinks he’s trying to build an aesthetic, with his spreading scruff and too-large sweater, but with his turtle hat Jemma is always reminded that Fitz would much rather disappear completely than be seen.

Every now and then, he’ll push the beanie up in frustration or excitement or when he’s so immersed in a problem he loses sense of the physical world, and the front lock of his hair will escape, turning him from a turtle into a unicorn. Jemma knows better than to tug on that curl.

They’ve been bumping through the countryside in her dad’s old Volvo all afternoon, winding up from Sheffield to Glasgow. True, they’d taken a detour at a beach, and Jemma had been unprepared for the wind, so now she’s wearing a matching oversized jumper, Fitz’s extra, though hers is blue and his faded green. She’s rolled the sleeves up but it still hangs nearly past her shorts.

She wore it last night, too, when they sat by a fire on her parents’ back deck, drinking cocoa and watching the stars, so now the sleeves smell like wood smoke and the collar smells of Fitz’s aftershave. She hopes it’ll be just as brisk in Glasgow so she’ll have a reason to keep wearing it, and then maybe somehow this trip will spill over into their new term at uni and he’ll let her keep wearing it then.

“Oxidization!” Fitz cries, smacking the steering wheel, and Jemma jumps, realizing she’s been staring.

“Come again?”

“Sorry, your da and I were having a conversation last night and it was on the tip of my tongue -- doesn’t matter. Damn. Must send him a post when we reach my mum’s--”

“Why don’t you give him a call when we stop?” She’s curled up on her seat so she can nudge his thigh with her toes. “He couldn’t seem to stop talking to you. Or _about_ you, after.”

Fitz glances over at her, a funny half-smile ticking up one side of his mouth, but before he can respond, something under the hood of the car makes a rumbling, gurgling sort of noise and they shudder to a stop.

“Bugger,” Fitz mutters, yanking out the keys as smoke unfurls across the windshield.

“Is that a bad sign?” Jemma teases. They clamber out, though Jemma’s not got shoes on so she stands on her seat and leans across the roof, fanning at the smoke with her map while Fitz squeezes past the fence posts lining the field beside the road and forces the hood up.

“Bad’s relative, I s’pose, but it probably means we won’t make it to Glasgow before nightfall. Less you want to walk.” He glances over his shoulder at the patchwork of fields and hedgerows and little stone walls stretching to the grey horizon. “Might get a tad muddy.”

“Well, can’t be meeting your mum in that state!” Jemma drops back into the car and scoots over to the driver’s side. “Fitz, we have company.”

There’s a pile-up behind them, a fair half-dozen cars at least, and no room for passing.

Fitz shuts the hood again and frowns at her dramatically through the windshield. “Not going to help, are you?”

“You push, I’ll drive,” she shoots back, grinning cheerily.

He huffs something but slides back around the car, shoving her playfully by the shoulder as he passes her window. She’s glad there’s no one to witness her loopy smile when she bounces back up because it’s inappropriate to be this happy after spending the better part of a year and now the entirety of the holidays with one person. But she’s gotten to tease him for the way his socks fall down and she’s learned that he chews his straws long after the liquid in his drink is gone and isn’t a best friend supposed to illuminate your days and nights like this?

“Faster, good man, faster! Chop chop,” she calls, craning around to watch Fitz straining against the boot of the car amidst a cacophony of honks.

He flips her a rude hand gesture.

They turn off at the first inn on the side of the road and park the car under a thatched overhang.

“Well done, chap,” she congratulates him as he slumps against the boot of the car, panting from the exertion.

“You’ve got just as much musculature as I do, Simmons. You could’ve swapped off, or--”

“And deprived those girls in the next car of that premium view of your bum? Perish the thought.”

She pats him on the shoulder and bounces off to find the loo.

 

 

The nice people at the front desk put in a call for a tow truck and Fitz calls his mum to tell her to not wait up. He finds Jemma in the back garden, which is bedecked with fairy lights and arrangements of wildflowers and seems to be a popular stopover point for travelers. She’s straddling the bench of a picnic table and already halfway through a pint.

“Cheers.” He knocks her glass with his and sets about catching up.

“At least we didn’t break down in the middle of that goat herd,” Jemma notes, bobbing her head in time to the jaunty music coming from somewhere, or maybe everywhere. “They would’ve swarmed the car.”

Fitz snorts -- beer actually spills out of his nose-- at the mental image. They’d blown nearly forty-five minutes waiting for a lackadaisical cadre of goats to hold conference in the middle of the road. 

“Death by goat.” He shakes his head, beer and Jemma’s laugh warming his belly. “That’s just tragic.”

“Pathetic, more like.” Jemma squints one eye and spreads her hands. “ _In the end, it wasn’t his fierce insistence of Scottish superiority that did them in, but a marauding gang of ruminants.”  
_

“That’s what I get for venturing into England!” he exclaims, slamming his empty glass down. “The nerve.”

“The things you do for me, Fitzy,” Jemma sighs.

She gets up to dance in the grass and tries to tug him after her. Fitz shakes his head, teasing her fingertips with his own as he resists her pull. It is like she is so full of uncontrollable energy that needs to shake some of it off, and he doesn’t want to spoil her joy, or the cocoon of the day’s camaraderie, with his own insecurity and awkwardness.

No, the universe can do that for him.

“Those guys are staring at you,” he informs her, hoping he’s concealed his bitterness.

Jemma does a twirl to inconspicuously pick out the men in question. “So what? I’m a nubile young individual, why shouldn’t they look?”

He’d expected indignation or disinterest, but as she jaunts about she keeps glancing back over at the muscly types who are chuckling to each other and eyeing her. The whole thing makes him feel sick.

“Y’know what, I’m going to go wait in the car,” he informs her, standing abruptly. “More tired than I thought.”

“Don’t be a grump,” she groans, chasing after him as he takes the path towards the front of the inn. “Fitz, please! Are we okay?”

She catches his hand and he faces her. He knows the petulant protrusion of the tip of his tongue from the corner of his mouth and his pointed avoidance of her gaze is more indication of his melancholia than he’d care to provide, but it’s late and he’s nervous and he’s taking it out on Jemma.

He’s nervous, because he’s taking the girl who means more to him than anything in the world to meet his mum, previously the most precious part of his existence. He’s nervous, because last night he met her parents and they treated him like a goddamn son and he and Jemma had done the dishes after dinner while her parents put on a record and he could imagine years of holidays spent like that, the Simmonses slightly tipsy on rum balls and hot cocoa with Jemma after, the two of them sharing a single deck chair.

He’s nervous, because since he became friends with Jemma, his veins are filled with molten sunshine and yesterday he had to stop himself from kissing her hand when he caught it mid-slap across the divider while she drove. He’s nervous because he’s nearly said _I love you_ a dozen times this summer and he doesn’t want to make Jemma uncomfortable. 

“We’re fine, Jemma,” he sighs. “I’m just knackered. Wake me when the tow man’s here.”

 

 

Jemma’s seen Fitz’s jealousy before, and at first it was a bit awkward, but it’s not merely directed at suitors, but rather anyone who vies for the coveted spot he occupies in her life. It’s a wonder he wasn’t jealous of her parents, for goodness’ sake.

If he weren’t always disappearing under the turtle hat, if he didn’t have such a warped view of himself, maybe he would understand that he’s carved out a place for himself that no one could hope to fill. It’s not definable, and none of the words she hears bandied about by her friends or on TV seem to describe it. But she feels it.

Still, that’s no reason for him to get salty when a man gives her an appreciative look. If she wants to dabble, every now and then--

One of the men from earlier sits down heavily across the picnic table from her. “Hey, I’m Todd.”

She stares at his extended hand without seeing it, because instead she’s imagining a potential future, of she and Fitz sitting on the deck of a retirement home in rocking chairs. It’s a future in which Jemma’s spent a lifetime chasing bland, replaceable men, and it’s only there at age seventy or whatever that she looks over at her constant companion, who still chews on his drink straws with his dentures, and realizes he’s the one who’s been filling her heart for decades.

“Nice to meet you, Todd,” she says faintly, but she doesn’t shake his hand or stay to make small talk.

Fitz has only unlocked the passenger side door, and the keys are probably in his pocket, so she carefully climbs over him, praying he won’t wake with her bum hovering in front of his nose, and curls up in the driver’s seat.

She doesn’t know yet what she wants from Fitz. She hopes he won’t ask until she’s worked that out, though she has no doubt he is aching to know.

But she would rather spend a lifetime of cold nights in their broken, borrowed car with him than a single night without him. And that must count for something.

 

 

Fitz jerks awake, his feet slipping off the dashboard, and experiences a moment of panic when he realizes the car is in motion and no one is at the steering wheel.

Then he sees the tow truck ahead of them, and Jemma stretched across the divider between the seats. It can’t be comfortable, the stick pushed against her abdomen like that, but her head is on his thigh and her hand curls around his knee, like she’s checking that he’s there, like she’s keeping him from flying away.

He winds the ends of her ponytail around his index finger. In the daylight he feels stupid and ungrateful, to question the perfection of these moments. _I love you_ s can wait.


End file.
